1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a paper feed device for feeding paper to the copying mechanism portion of a copying machine, the recording mechanism portion of a recording machine or the printing mechanism portion of a printing machine, and more particularly to a paper feed device for storing paper sheets cut to a predetermined size (hereinafter referred to as paper leaves) and feeding a predetermined number of the paper leaves in succession.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The high-speed copying machine or the recording or printing machine for recording the output from an electronic computer consumes a great deal of paper during a very short time and in this connection, it is desirable that the paper feed device thereof be capable of storing a great deal of paper leaves.
Even in the paper feed device for storing therein so great a supply of paper leaves, the great storage capacity would be of little value if the paper leaves fail to be fed accurately one by one from the paper feed device.
This is because, if a plurality of paper leaves should be fed at a time (this is known as overlap feed), these paper leaves would jam in the recording mechanism portion or the like to give rise to the trouble of stopping operation of the mechanism for removal of the jam, which would take much time.
Also, when overlap feed occurs, blank or unprinted paper leaves may mix among printed paper leaves to hamper the paging of the paper leaves.
The paper feed device of the prior art has employed means such as separating pawls or the like for separating each paper leaf from the others, whereas this could not afford sufficient separability between the paper leaves and suffered from the possibility of overlap feed.